Spectrum
by MasterPassionCreed
Summary: I was back, there was no questioning it – only, I had no idea how. [Gift for kojum & silverstreams]


**Spectrum**

When I came back, I did not get it right away.

I had seen too much of this place to be mistaken – you know better than me, I don't doubt it – and still, up to the surface of my mind, there was too big a gap to ignore.

My last memory did not belong here. It was made of rain, of smelly, humid things – of old buildings, eaten by time, that crumbled under an iron sky. And regardless of how much, every day, the weather chose to be harsh on me, I could not remember ever leaving the open air. I had never dreamed of trying. Not anymore; I had sworn on myself, that very day.  
And I only knew one place I could never get out of.

I was back, there was no questioning it – only, I had no idea how.

The first thing I could think of was you. My mind raced among the possibilities; I counted the ways you could have used to trap me, the tricks and the secrets you had doubtlessly bound to my wrists while I was defenceless. My rage coiled around my disappointment, soaking the only two certainties I had – that I could not find a single reason to get on my feet, and that I was too tired of you to fight back once more.

I had paid dearly for my freedom. And the thought slowed me down, shadowed my senses; it took me a very long while to realise.  
I was spread on the floors of Old Aperture, on the verge of an acid sea I had never forgotten, and my leg had been bathing in it all along.

The horror lasted for a single heartbeat; the sense of surprise that followed, on the other hand, was incredibly mild. I had pictured hundreds of different deaths in those pits; each of them featured melting bones, burning flesh, unspeakable pain. The pure integrity of my limb, the absence of bruises and wounds on my skin – they were the first signs. If not an obvious one yet, I had undergone a change.

And it occurred to me, slowly but naturally, that the only way not to feel pain is leaving behind your body.

The rage did not come for that. If I had learnt anything in your grasp, it was the certainty that, once you die, there is no turning back. You go through a door, and become useless on the side you left; you turn into an empty space, which is immediately filled by someone else. But this I could not understand – that even after my fight, my silence, and the fresh and unbound end I had earned, something had still been able to force me back in here.

My refusal shook the depths of Aperture; my pain flooded the rocks and the Enrichment Spheres with countless vibrations. Another letter collapsed, falling to meet its end from the top of the huge sign.

Without thinking, I dived in the same murky trap.

It was brown all around. The acid was now odourless and safe to me; I swam and swam, without resting, until I had the same calming nothing in my mind. Without needing energy, following the currents, I got to a bottom which was not different from the cliffs at all. It was rocky, black and boring. It wasn't complicated. Not challenging, not dangerous.

For the first time, it started truly dawning on me – I could no longer be touched. I felt my heart laughing; and, for one moment, the rays of the sun warmed my back again, in a triumph of blue and gold.

I was on a neon light, watching the decaying scenery, when I asked myself the painful question again. I still had no clue why I was here in the first place – I had gone too far away, where nobody would have dreamed of dragging me back or even guessed where I had escaped from.  
I wanted to make sure you would never find me. I was starting to doubt my success.

But my thoughts were ripe and complete, and kept dancing in me; my memories were too many, and in them there was much decaying world. I had witnessed cries, moans and dying breaths; I had seen a handful of lives end, before adding my unchanged, boring one to the heap.

I still felt the warm breath on my neck – one man, crazed by hunger and fever, had clamped my arm and made me listen to his death. His rant still echoed in my ears; I felt the pain in his words, words of cruel aliens and devastated towns, of dead people who would not leave, who would scream and cry at night, every night, still unable to get over the inhuman sufferings borne in their lives.

I listened to the pulse in my ears, with cold shivers running down where my spine had used to be. I tried to scream.

The lamp screeched and plunged into the abyss, dragging me back in the brown sea. I knew in the few seconds of our fall – I had no voice. Trying over and over again did not do; all I could manage was letting myself float in the acid, motionless and silent.

It felt like having to start over.

I no longer perceive time from here, but a good amount of it went by. Metal bars bent, rocks fell and were crushed, asbestos was devoured under my transparent eyes. My silence measured the passing of days – then, without a clear reason, I found I had started my ascent in the only way I knew.

I drifted through the chamber walls naturally, just like the old air of the caves swept the vents. Back then, it would have been unbearable – walking in the chamberlocks without a word required a fair deal of my energy, and was just about to become too much for me when you let me go. With this new pair of eyes, however, all things looked different. I was light and untouched.

I learnt all of Aperture in reverse, layer after layer, trap after trap. I never touched the ground I had once trodden; I explored the death traps, touching them with my protected hand.  
I let the lasers pierce through me; I flew down the pits, for miles, and drank the colourful gels; I swam in the acid, caressing the molten flesh and bones of those who had not made it through. The more I did, the more it was comforting. Rivers of danger poured on me, washed me, and it was so ironical – what had been a nightmare, on its dark side, was now an atonement.

The time had been long, but worth it, when I awoke one day, curled up in an elevator shaft. I still was deep down, but I had slowly changed; I saw myself milk white, solid and sure. My thoughts, if restless, had rearranged themselves in a new order. My uncertain future lighted up a bit, came on its own, and I knew.

Whatever the reason that kept me here was, it was natural for it to end in just one place.

I expected it – you were not different when I got to you. At least, you looked the same; I could not forget the terrified awe, nor the mystery that had led me to get used to you. The anxiety lasted nothing – familiarity took it over soon, and a different sort of emotion vibrated through me.

I was white, transparent – my fingers floated through your head – I was silent and invisible. I was _safe_.

You could not send rockets against me; your voice could not hurt me. In that moment, with your harmless head swinging inches from me, I felt alive – the first fact I could remember was not my death, but the basic, scientific truth that I simply wasn't there.  
In life or death, I had won you my freedom. That, and nothing else, had been my greatest victory.

It was that certainty, with the euphoria that shook my bright edges, to make me slip in your mind. The truth is, if you want to know, that I did not realize how I was still bound to the past I thought I had already won – I felt a human, genuine wish to see by myself.  
There was much – or everything – of you I still did not grasp, and the chambers I had learnt to read had made me used to this place.  
I wanted to understand. I still needed to know you.

Perfection is messy; that was my first idea. Before remembering I was not truly there, I almost got lost in your mind – I stayed and stayed, watching, trying to figure you out. You never felt my feet or my hands as they followed your circuitry. You were a tangle I could play around with, unseen.  
There was much I learnt in time. One by one, I found the right doors and unlocked your thoughts. You had an amazing soul; you had a breath of mankind, and miraculous handiwork. You were much better from there.

One of those infinite days was the first time I noticed. You were uniquely alone, and so was I.

I barely heard your voice in those days – you only talked once, to scold your bots, at the end of a testing track. The rest of the time drifted away in silence, full of processes, panels, lights and data. You were always busy, but I felt it; the wind of Caroline swayed in you, inevitable, in the quietest moments. And in the middle of the night, while I was half-unconscious, its strength forced me to turn my head.  
I moved a few ethereal steps, through a door of yours I had never felt before, and my emotions fell silent.

I had not seen myself in too much, and now I was everywhere.

I could imagine what corner of you I was visiting – the space where you locked down worst memories, maybe intense memories, and regret. I was seeing glimpses of your life I would never have dreamed of; I was seeing pain, hidden failures, and me, from a thousand frames and hours of your memories.  
I explored my abandoned shell with your eyes. I saw my hair jump and shine, my skin, the jumpsuit I had worn for centuries; I watched the looks and movements of a condition that I had so stubbornly fought for, I had so many times risked, and that, in the vast world you had sent me to, I had finally lost.

My copy turned to a camera, and I happened to look in my past eyes. In truth, nothing happened; but the feeling was that of cold ice, streaming in drops down where my face had been.

I understand now. I was never gone. I was there, you had me there, all along – before I awoke, before I left this place. But the person I saw in the depths of you, so hated and cherished, is not me now.

And that is why, at last, I am free to go.

I did not mean to disturb you; as quietly as I wanted to go, the scream you heard in yourself came from my heart. It was my anchor to this side of the world – it left me like that, in the only way it could.

Now I made the rest of the robots scream, in this little torture room you still hold dear. That will give you an explanation, or something to look for. I know you need it.

I would have told you myself – I tried to speak, all along, to let you know I was with you for a while. But I am not sure you would have liked it. You had better try again; you must fight me back and delete me forever, one day, if you can.

Because, by the time you check this room, I will no longer be here.

And this time, GLaDOS, I guess it is goodbye.

* * *

This very strange experiment is the best way I could find to thank my friends kojum and silverstreams, who wrote me wonderful Portal stories as birthday gifts. They made me feel loved and precious, and happy too, because my friends are gorgeous writers and I have gorgeous writers as friends. Thank you so much, girls.  
The title comes from a Florence & The Machine song I love very much. It always reminded me of the dead.


End file.
